To make a long story short, the Farhud was a pogrom against Iraqi Jews on June 1st and 2nd, 1941. By the time the violence was quelled, approximately 200 Jews were dead, over 1000 homes and businesses had been looted, hundreds were injured and many women were raped.

What bothers me is that I never learned about this. In all of the years that I attended Hebrew school, while the Holocaust was part of the curriculum after a certain age, the Farhud was not discussed.

The suffering of the Jews who lived through the Farhud is on par with the Jews who lived through the Holocaust. It’s time that both were given the reverence and the spotlight equally.